Tag: psychological thriller

​Anna is happily married to Will, a wealthy restaurateur, but on his thirtieth birthday she receives a chilling text message that brings a past she thought she had left behind tumbling into the present. As we read about how Anna deals to this new threat to her home and security, we find out what happened to Anna when she was fifteen and embarked on her first serious relationship. It seems her past is not done with her yet.

I became totally engrossed in this suspense thriller from the outset as Anna is a strong narrator and protagonist, that is not to say she isn’t flawed and there were times her calm, intelligent sensibilIty seemed at odds with her passive and somewhat deceptive actions. All the characters in this unpredictable thriller raised my hackles, making this quite a thrilling read.

The last few chapters really amped up my adrenaline and by the end I was rattled enough to have the story in my head for hours. This is my second book from this author and I absolutely loved it. Huge recommendation from me.

Laura loves her son, Daniel, and is excited to have him nearby again as he finishes University and moves back to London to start his new job soon. However, she soon realised she won’t have him to herself when he meets and becomes smitten by the beautiful Cherry. Cherry has always wanted to leave her humble beginnings behind and sees Daniel as a way out of what she considers everyday drudgery.

As Cherry and Laura face off, an avalanche of manipulation ensues driving Laura further from the ones she loves, but how far will Cherry go to get what she wants?

I loved the chess moves played by Cherry and Laura to monopolise Daniel and I think the politics between them kept me turning the pages. Neither character was particularly likeable but Laura had my sympathy throughout this read.

However, what I liked less whilst reading this was a sense of overdramatic events and the only character I really was interested in reading about was Cherry’s mum and I wished there was more of her.

As a psychological thriller this didn’t breach any new barriers but it’s a perfect beach read and is entertaining enough to be recommended.

​Rachel after a whirlwind romance with Jack is pregnant with his baby. The past year has been hard for Rachel after a long-term relationship break-up, her mother’s illness and death and a mysterious event in her medical career. Rachel no longer works as a doctor, but a secretary at a legal firm and is still very much processing everything that has happened to her. One night she sees the notification of an e-mail on Jack’s iPad and becomes suspicious about what he seems to be hiding about himself. Realising she has not met any of his friends, Rachel tries to dig deeper into his life but is this about her paranoia or is he really hiding something?

As much as parts of this book’s did exasperate me, I couldn’t stop reading it as what could have happened that could be so awful that an otherwise affable Jack has gone to such great lengths to hide? As it is narrated from Rachel’s point of view you, as a reader, are at the mercy of her judgment and to complicate matters Rachel is far from transparent herself, with issues relating to her personal and professional life, which become clearer later on in the book.

It would be easy to dismiss Rachel as whiney or paranoid but the reasons behind her insecurity and her beating herself up are caused by significant issues she has dealt with in a short period of time. Her pregnancy puts the pressure on her relationship with Jack to become all it can be before the baby arrives.

I loved the resulting gray areas that presented in the issues both Rachel and Jack faced and the moral of this story, for me, questioned the vilification of people for choices they made with good intentions, whether it’s right to condemn these characters entirely based on events of their past and their need to be accepted for who they are without judgment. Ultimately the book gave me a lot to think about and for that reason I highly recommend it.

The parts that irritated me were dwarfed by how much I enjoyed reading the moral dilemmas faced by Rachel and Jack and apart from saying the book was verging on being a bit too preachy about the medical profession, obviously written by someone who quite rightly has a great respect and admiration for someone close to them who is a doctor, I found Rachel’s past role as a new paediatric registrar odd. Her relationship with her consultant was odd.

Her singling out one patient as a paediatric registrar with most likely not a huge fraction of the knowledge or experience of paediatric oncology that the paediatric oncology consultant above her has (let alone other more experienced registrars in the department and all the support staff oncology units have thankfully) and going against departmental and GMC guidelines undermined the conscientious part of Rachel’s character that would have known that the diagnosis of cancer and the subsequent poor prognosis it may have can lead to catastrophic outcomes. I know this is fiction but to be realistic enough for me, this would have been, in my humble opinion, on the mind of an ethical doctor like Rachel in the way she is written: thorough and obsessive. As much as I liked this book the odd medicine did detract some of the enjoyment for me, but probably wouldn’t bother less obsessive medics and non-medics.

​Lane went to live with her grandparents after her mother’s death but left their care whilst she was still a teenager, now she returns after getting a call that her cousin, Allegra, is missing. Lane tries to piece together what happened to Allegra in the dysfunction that is her family.

Not an easy read due to the themes of incest and grooming in this hard-hitting novel about a fundamentally flawed family. However, the mystery of what happened to Allegra kept me turning the pages and I read this book in one sitting. As bleak as the story was it did end on a note of hope and the complex characters made it a worthwhile read.

​Jo is threatened by a woman outside her place of work over something to do with her husband’s investigative journalist job. However, he doesn’t believe her and uses her longstanding anxiety and agoraphobia against her. Soon the threat against Jo and her daughter escalates and Jo must take drastic action to keep them both safe.

A taut, fast paced mystery psychological thriller, which not only presents us with Jo’s current day issues but also finds her heading on a collision course with secrets hurried in her childhood. Not knowing who she can trust anymore Jo flees and eventually realises the threat isn’t coming from where she thought.

​An original and interesting take on the serial killer psychological thriller genre this novel is written from the point of view of Milly, who has been fostered by a psychologist and his wife under a new identity whilst she waits to be a witness at trial. Milly has had a disturbing life so far and her mother stands accused of several counts of murder. Living with her new foster family is not ideal as their daughter Phoebe bullies Milly from the outset.

I found this an absolutely stunning read because not only did it tackle the rarer female serial killer but it also approached the themes from an original viewpoint. The pace was compelling without any lull or let up and Molly kept be guessing from the start. I didn’t find the plot particularly twisty as the title, Good Me, Bad Me already had me primed for a struggle within the main character, however, the lack of surprises did not detract from the macabre themes in the book as we unravelled Milly’s twisted past.

I was intrigued by the choices Milly made and how she would deal with her situation at home with her new foster family and in court at her mother’s trial. An absolute must read in the crime/psychological thriller genre.

​A remarkable thriller set in Southern Ireland, which opens with the murder of Annie Doyle who is eventually reported missing by her family but due to lack of leads and the assumption she was a heroin addict and prostitute, was not investigated thoroughly. Years later her sister, Karen still hopes to find out what happened to Annie, but at the heart of this crime is a family with a number of hurried secrets.

This book opens at a point in the story you cannot help but get absorbed in, and the pace keeps up until the chilling end. This is not my first book from this author but I think this is the best one I have read from her so far. Lying In Wait is a suspenseful mystery thriller and will keep you up all night.

​Alicia returns to her childhood home after many years to help her Aunt take care of her estranged father after his debilitating strokes. Weary about returning to look after a parent who had disowned her at sixteen, she’s even more troubled about returning there with her eight year old daughter. However, her return piques the interest of someone locally who is harbouring a number of deadly secrets and has both Alicia and her daughter, Jennie in his crosshairs.

Well written characters make this thriller an intriguing read as the story is told from the point of view of Alicia and the malevolent stranger stalking her and her daughter. As we are told the slowly unfolding and disturbing back story of a killer, Alicia battles with a sense of foreboding awakened in her by her familial home. So we are intrigued further by Alicia’s past and what had happened between her and her parents for her to leave as soon as she was able.

The identity of the stranger kept me turning pages until the end and proved to make this a satisfying psychological thriller to read.

​After the death of her bestfriend Charlie, Grace falls apart, but she decides to trace Charlie’s father, whom Charlie had never known and in doing so finds Anna, who is Charlie’s half-sister. However, things start getting strange after Anna arrives and Grace finds herself becoming more distant from those she cares about.

A gripping psychological read that kept me enthralled throughout. Told from two points of view in time: the present and from the past when Grace and Charlie first met, The Sister tells the tale of two best friends who had challenging childhoods and secrets kept from them leading to much heartache.

​Laura witnesses a brutal attack during an eclipse but when the incident is reported and the case goes to trial it results in Laura and her boyfriend, Kit end up changing their identity in order to hide. In a well of secrets just which ones lead to the destruction of their lives as they knew it.

A remarkable thriller told from the point of view of Laura and Kit in the present and fifteen years in the past to link up a series of events that led to their current covert living arrangements. With suspicion falling on the victim of the sexual assault as much as the alleged perpetrators and electrifying courtroom drama, this is probably one of my favourite thrillers of 2017.

A thriller that keeps you guessing right until the very end. This title is available for pre-order and will be published on 20th April 2017.